


The Seat Neighbor

by orphan_account



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M, Flight au, annoying seat neighbor au, schmidt hates flying, set before S1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 13:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13858821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Schmidt absolutely detests flying, but maybe hates it just a little less when his seat neighbor is that adorable. Set a couple years before start of Season 1.





	The Seat Neighbor

**Author's Note:**

> So I know there's not much of a market for New Girl fanfiction, but I wrote this after finishing s6 and bawling my eyes out so I figured I might as well post it.

It doesn’t matter how many times Schmidt has been on plane rides before. He’ll never learn to do more than accept them. Plane rides makes him tense and nervous, unable to stop thinking about the unlikely yet possible prospect of something with the plane going irreparably wrong and the massive metal structure losing control only to fall and sink to the bottom of the ocean. He imagines death not coming for him immediately, but rather leaving him aware of everything that’s happening when water fills his lungs and he chokes to death. Or maybe the plane crashes in a field somewhere, and it catches on fire and smoke is everywhere and he knows he’s dying long before he does. There are multiple ways for events to unfold here.

Even if he makes it out alive, plane rides are to him nothing short of unbearable torture. Seat neighbors that snore, distasteful excuses for food, small children poking him in the back with their sharp fingers and the sound of sensitive people everywhere emptying the contents of their stomach into those gross plastic bags at the slightest change in air pressure. In all of his flights, he has never experienced a single one where he’s been able to kick back and relax, just watch a movie and fall asleep with a glass of cheap airplane wine in a plastic cup, and he’s not convinced he ever will.

It takes 6 and a half hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles if all goes to plan and they survive the flight. That is 390 minutes, which times 60 is 3 400 seconds. He’ll be counting them down.

Wise from experience he’s landed himself a window seat. If he is lucky, this should make the flight less unbearable than with a middle seat. Schmidt is too busy staring out the window contemplating further possible ways this plane could crash and kill all of them instantly to notice when someone sits down in the seat next to his. Whoever they are, they’re last minute. The plane is moving now and his anxiety is making him freak out and he has to close his eyes and pretend he’s on a lovely paradise island where the sun is shining and he’s sipping a nice Margarita and…  
“Nervous flyer, much?”  
 _Oh no. Not a talkative one._ He opens his eyes, looking over to his seat neighbor. She’s his age, maybe a year younger. Indian descent. Tall, skinny, dark brown hair in a ponytail. Attractive, his brain, although still in freaking out-mode, acknowledges. As in, super attractive. As in if he’d met her somewhere else at another time…  
“Detest it. Deeply.”  
“Yeah, I don't care. If you don’t quit your panicked, unnaturally loud breathing, I won’t be able to fall asleep on this flight and I need this beauty sleep. So keep it together, whatever-your-name-is.” She crosses her legs as she sternly stares him down.  
“Schmidt.”  
“I didn’t ask, idiot.” This makes him blush.  
“Got it.” The giant metal structure is going faster now. They’ll be airborne any second. He wants to, needs to panic-breathe his way through this, but something about his unreasonably gorgeous seat neighbor terrifies him too much to dare defy her. He closes his eyes and wishes himself away to somewhere else.

Funny enough, it almost works. Schmidt doesn’t fall asleep - he’s nowhere near that point in his journey to getting over his fear of flying - but he doesn’t freak out either. His breathing remains close to a healthy standard as they lift from the ground and rise upwards through the clouds. Before he knows it, the plane flies smoothly and people unclasp their seatbelts, some even daring to move around on the plane. _They did it. He’s fine._ The young woman next to him gives him another downgrading glance as he exhales and discreetly wipes away a single tear from his cheek. It’s tempting to send her an irritated look back, but truth be told she doesn’t seem like the type that would care. Schmidt picks up the magazine he bought at the airport instead, ready to immerse himself in its content before something else on this plane bothers him.

He reads only a few pages before the first disturbance arrives. Something, someone, is first touching his shoulder and then resting the whole weight of their head on it. He twitches, prepared to give a thorough lecture about the basic rules of physical contact on airplanes to his attractive yet intimidating seat neighbor, only to realise she has her eyes closed and mouth open. Asleep.

It should with all logic annoy him to death.   
He fails to grasp why it doesn’t. 

For someone so intimidating when awake, she looks peculiarly innocent sleeping, and moving his shoulder or waking her up just seems... unreasonable. Not when he can sense her light exhales on the skin of his neck, not when he can feel the softness of her hair against his cheek. The makeup she was wearing earlier has been wiped off and she looks younger now, probably a few years younger than him. He can’t help wondering who she is and what she does, what she’s like when she’s not asleep on a stranger’s shoulder on a plane flying over the continent. There’s clearly a great deal of confidence in her personality, but aside from that she’s a mystery to him. A mystery that smiles in her sleep. That makes him smile, too.

She could be anyone. She could be anything. He knows nowhere enough about this woman with tawny skin and a killer body, which looks just as great in the light pink training jacket and black workout leggings she’s wearing now as he guesses it does in a short black dress and high heels or even nothing at all, to make any assumptions about her. He definitely doesn’t know enough about her to sense that somewhere, somehow, she might be important to him one day.  
Yet he does. He can’t explain why, but he does. He just does.

Schmidt’s shoulder is already numb by the time she starts stirring, half-awakedly adjusting herself so that her head is leaning backward instead of on him. She stays asleep like that for the rest of their flight, giving him no opportunity for conversation. The first flight in his life he has actually wanted to chat to his seat neighbor and he’s not even given a chance.

She wakes up only when they’re about to get off the plane, and in the swarm of people everywhere he manages to lose her. It stings a little, not even knowing her name and not knowing anything about how to find her again, but he can’t let it get to him. There are other girls out there, and he knows very well staying hung up on some stranger from a plane ride will do him no good. 

So Schmidt forgets about her.

At least until one day, almost two years later, when she shows up at their loft presenting herself as the best friend of their new roommate.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to leave kudos and/or a comment, it always makes my day.


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